Yann Greder

INTRODUCTION

This is a project that meets the internal needs of the IT department. The IT infrastructure has evolved a lot in a short period of time to catch up. Each IT team member is responsible for several services and therefore does not have a permanent global view of the services. It frequently happens that incidents are reported by users. During problem analysis, we don’t have a tool that provides us with metrics. We are eager to improve the quality of service.

INITIATING

As a project manager, I organized a meeting with the sponsor, as well as other IT collaborators to develop the project charter and to define the stakeholders.

PLANNING

Define the project team, specialists in several fields. Gather the requirements, the platform must be able to send SMS to alert in case of failure or to operate despite a general power or network failure. Analysis of the existing, already implemented tools such as scripts that need to be integrated. Define the scope. As the infrastructure evolves all the time, the monitored elements will have to be too. We have defined which basic elements, which will serve as a model and which will allow us to know the protocols used in general, will be integrated into the project and which will be excluded and added in an operational phase. Create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and definition of activities for the planning and distribution of the work to be done. Define the project schedule and budget for hardware, licenses and external service providers. Identify risks and their responses strategies. Define communication and organization tools, the frequency of the sessions and feedback to the sponsor and all other stakeholders. Document the project steps. Selection of solutions to be tested.

EXECUTING

Testing of the selected solutions, comparison of the results and selection of the most suitable one, and purchasing the licenses. Implementation of the solution with high availability. Creation of the rules and operating processes. Create templates. Define operational processes to be used after the project is completed. Make sure to respect the schedule, especially for the implementation of the “probes” of strategic elements of the company that are part of the scope with the company’s stakeholders. Alarm and notification strategy and training of the operational team.

MONITORING & CONTROLLING

Check with each specialist that the “probe” reacts “as desired” compared to the plan. Validation of the scope.

CLOSING

Archived reports and documentation. Update the lessons learned repository. Transfer the deliverables to the operational side, the main one being the high availability monitoring solution, as well as a screen to display notifications, a document describing the monitoring strategy for the operational side, global documentation and a SMS gateway. The solution still exists today and monitors hundreds of components in the company